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Hi all could anyone recommend a good gap insurance company , there seems to be so many with varying prices

Definitely not VW as they’re way too expensive.

I’ve used ALA in the past. They used to price match competitor prices - don’t know if they still do. Discount code MSE25 used to get you 25% discount off their screen prices, but the code may no longer be valid.

You could also try Insure the GAP, Direct GAP or GAP insurance. All of these have been mentioned at times by members on various VAG forums.

ALA is who VW use and charge you a lovely mark up according to my sales guy.

Hi,

Also try Motoreasy as they offer competitive prices and there is a discount code on their site. Avoid the dealer as they will charge circa. £400 for a return to invoice policy where companies like ALA and Motoreasy will charge around £125 before discount codes are used, and you will get better cover. A lot of dealers have arrangements with providers such as AutoProtect, so get a commission on every policy they sell. And ignore the scare stories the dealer will tell you about other Gap policies not paying out as most times these are untrue.

You need to decide if you want replacement vehicle, return to invoice, and usually for second hand cars, agreed value gap. As ever, read the policy and then you can make an informed choice. The choice is yours, but replacement vehicle is particularly useful is you negotiated a large discount or had finance contribution. Where as return to invoice is based on the invoice price including discounts, so if you write the car off, that’s the figure used and you could be thousands of pounds short to get back into a new car if the discounts and finance contribution are much lower or non existent a year or so down the road.

Good luck.

lancslad1985 wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:40 pm ALA is who VW use and charge you a lovely mark up according to my sales guy.

Yes, that’s how it works. ALA will provide VW with their net premium requirements, leaving VW to apply their own mark up (effectively VW’s commission) to arrive at the customer price, and that mark up will be significant. This is common practice with many of the add-ons that a VW dealer will try and sell you; with a hefty profit margin to VW, these add-ons are a good money maker for the dealer - paint protection being the classic example.

With paint protection, the VW dealership will try and charge you (probably) around £400 when the products they use can be bought off certain well known online auction sites for around £30-40 or less. They also don’t allocate sufficient time to prep the car and apply the paint protection products - they’ll probably spend no more than a couple of hours (they won’t do a full decontamination and correction of paintwork imperfections - they’ll just slap the products onto an unprepared car). To do the job properly would take around 1.5+ days.

Back to GAP insurance; better to cut out the middleman and go direct.

Aube wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:33 pm Hi,

Also try Motoreasy as they offer competitive prices and there is a discount code on their site. Avoid the dealer as they will charge circa. £400 for a return to invoice policy where companies like ALA and Motoreasy will charge around £125 before discount codes are used, and you will get better cover. A lot of dealers have arrangements with providers such as AutoProtect, so get a commission on every policy they sell. And ignore the scare stories the dealer will tell you about other Gap policies not paying out as most times these are untrue.

You need to decide if you want replacement vehicle, return to invoice, and usually for second hand cars, agreed value gap. As ever, read the policy and then you can make an informed choice. The choice is yours, but replacement vehicle is particularly useful is you negotiated a large discount or had finance contribution. Where as return to invoice is based on the invoice price including discounts, so if you write the car off, that’s the figure used and you could be thousands of pounds short to get back into a new car if the discounts and finance contribution are much lower or non existent a year or so down the road.

Good luck.

^ Good advice.

SRGTD wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:45 pm

lancslad1985 wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:40 pm ALA is who VW use and charge you a lovely mark up according to my sales guy.

Yes, that’s how it works. ALA will provide VW with their net premium requirements, leaving VW to apply their own mark up (effectively VW’s commission) to arrive at the customer price, and that mark up will be significant. This is common practice with many of the add-ons that a VW dealer will try and sell you; with a hefty profit margin to VW, these add-ons are a good money maker for the dealer - paint protection being the classic example.

With paint protection, the VW dealership will try and charge you (probably) around £400 when the products they use can be bought off certain well known online auction sites for around £30-40 or less. They also don’t allocate sufficient time to prep the car and apply the paint protection products - they’ll probably spend no more than a couple of hours (they won’t do a full decontamination and correction of paintwork imperfections - they’ll just slap the products onto an unprepared car). To do the job properly would take around 1.5+ days.

Back to GAP insurance; better to cut out the middleman and go direct.

I’m yet to meet a dealer of any brand that puts paint protection stuff on correctly, yet people still waste money on it. I’m surprised watchdog haven’t looked into the fraud dealers commit with this and the gap insurance prices etc.

@lancslad1985; agree - many of staff at the dealers who carry out new car prep probably don’t even know what a clay bar or fall out removal product is, so how can they be expected to correctly prep the car and apply the products to ensure they perform in line with the manufacturer’s claims? If I was considering spending £400+ on paint work protection, I’d be getting a professional detailer to do the job, not a run of the mill car cleaner at the VW dealership.

I noticed when I was at the VW dealer I use for servicing earlier this year they had a pricing menu for the package of add-ons customers could buy for their new car - paint work protection, alloy wheel and tyre insurance, dent and scratch insurance, GAP insurance. I seem to remember that to buy the complete package started at around £1,000(!) - it was more expensive for larger, more expensive cars. There’s probably around £600 - £650 pure profit margin in that £1,000 customer price. There’s no way I would be lining the dealers pockets with £600 - £650 of profit for products I don’t want. No doubt there will be some customers that fall for the salesperson’s patter and buy the complete package though - but not me. I’d buy GAP, but direct from the provider at a more realistic, affordable price.

Hi ,

On Gap, use code ACMGAP to get 12.5% discount off an ALA policy.

An dealer near us offers a package of gap, smart repairs, paint protection and wheel and tyre insurance for £1950!

On paint protection, the quote I received for LifeShine (Autoglym product) was £599, but if I took gap As well, the price would be £750 for both. A call to ALA and a visit to a professional detailer, the total cost of both would be £450.

So the advice is, always avoid paint protection from a dealer as the technicians 3 year old will be applying it on a ‘couldn’t get nursery cover day‘ and before you sign up, check the prices on gap, wheel/tyre, and smart repairs for other providers.

Aube wrote: Wed Jun 17, 2020 7:40 am Hi ,

On Gap, use code ACMGAP to get 12.5% discount off an ALA policy.

An dealer near us offers a package of gap, smart repairs, paint protection and wheel and tyre insurance for £1950!

On paint protection, the quote I received for LifeShine (Autoglym product) was £599, but if I took gap As well, the price would be £750 for both. A call to ALA and a visit to a professional detailer, the total cost of both would be £450.

So the advice is, always avoid paint protection from a dealer as the technicians 3 year old will be applying it on a ‘couldn’t get nursery cover day‘ and before you sign up, check the prices on gap, wheel/tyre, and smart repairs for other providers.

Echoing this, the dealer applied paint protection (lifeshine and others) is a very basic polymer resin paint sealant that doesn't last much beyond a couple of months at best. The longer duration claim is based on constantly using the detail spray to top-up every week, which would work with any off the shelf quick detailer. Not to mention it's generally applied in a rush with minimal care.

If you want the same level of protection the dealer offers, you can do it yourself for circa £50 of products, or pay a very similar amount with a reputable detailer and get a much better level of paint protection (usually ceramic) , and maybe some paint correction work at the same time.

Aube wrote: Wed Jun 17, 2020 7:40 am Hi ,

On Gap, use code ACMGAP to get 12.5% discount off an ALA policy.

An dealer near us offers a package of gap, smart repairs, paint protection and wheel and tyre insurance for £1950!

On paint protection, the quote I received for LifeShine (Autoglym product) was £599, but if I took gap As well, the price would be £750 for both. A call to ALA and a visit to a professional detailer, the total cost of both would be £450.

So the advice is, always avoid paint protection from a dealer as the technicians 3 year old will be applying it on a ‘couldn’t get nursery cover day‘ and before you sign up, check the prices on gap, wheel/tyre, and smart repairs for other providers.

@Aube - Those prices are shocking, but don’t come as any great surprise really. The potential ‘victims’ I feel sorry for are those customers who might not be internet-savvy (and there will still be some) so they won’t be aware of - or have access to online resources such as forums, nor will they be able to do any online research. They may fall for the salesperson’s spiel and buy these vastly over priced add-ons. When I was at my local dealers in February getting my car serviced and MOT’d, there was an elderly couple discussing buying a new car with one of the sales team. They were getting the salesperson’s patter to get them to buy the overall protection package. I was tempted to step in and tell them not to, but didn’t feel it was appropriate to do so.

When I was considering buying a new Golf back in 2007, Lifeshine paintwork protection was a fairly new product offering in VW dealerships at that time and the salesperson I saw was trying quite a hard sell tactic to get me to buy it. He had a whole load of support material (brochures, diagrams, sample products - no official online videos at that time!) to try to convince me I couldn’t live without Lifeshine. He even called in one of his colleagues to help put forward the merits of this ‘amazing’ product. Unknown to them, they were wasting their time with me though, and I told them if they didn’t stop trying to sell me something I neither wanted nor needed, then there would be absolutely no prospect of me considering buying a car from them. They then realised they were fighting a losing battle and gave up .